How I Logged My Added Sugar for a Month in Noshlog
After reading about the WHO's sugar recommendation on the professional side of this blog, I decided to actually track my added sugar intake for a month. This is my personal experience — I am not a health professional, and how this went for me says nothing about what anyone else should do.
What I did
I used Noshlog's built-in sugar data. For each food I logged, the app shows sugar per 100 g and a separate "sugars, added" figure where the dataset records one, and scales it to the portion I actually ate. My self-imposed target was the FDA Daily Value of 50 g of added sugar per day, with an eye on the stricter 25 g level as a stretch goal.
A few habits made it workable:
- I logged meals as I ate them, using the editable timestamp when I forgot to log at the exact time.
- For things I eat often I used custom portions, so I didn't have to weigh anything repeatedly.
- I kept the daily total visible on the Today screen and glanced at the nutrient trend graph once a week.
What surprised me
The first week was humbling. Here is my weekly average added sugar across the month:
| Week | Average added sugar / day |
|---|---|
| 1 | 74 g |
| 2 | 58 g |
| 3 | 49 g |
| 4 | 41 g |
Three things I did not expect:
- The label lies by omission. Several products looked "low sugar" on the front but the added sugar line told a different story. There is a huge difference between total sugar from whole fruit and added sugar from processing.
- Drinks were the worst offenders. My coffee habit with flavoured syrup and juice accounted for far more added sugar than any solid food I ate.
- Logging changed what I chose. Just having the number in front of me at 6 pm made me pick a different dessert. I did not plan that; the data nudged me.
What I changed afterwards
Not much at first — and that is the point. I did not aim for a dramatic diet change; I switched to logging the same way for a second month to see whether the trend held. Two small swaps (diluting juice, dropping the flavoured syrup) made most of the difference between weeks 2 and 4.
Notes for anyone thinking about trying it
- This is not health advice. If you are thinking about changing your diet, talk to a qualified professional first.
- My numbers come from the food database Noshlog uses; always double-check against the label of the specific product you are eating.
- Tracking for a month gave me a trend I could actually see — one week alone would have told me very little.